The invention relates to global positioning system (“GPS”) based systems for controlling the navigation of vehicles in a mining environment.
Mining environments, and open pit mining environments in particular, are characterized by two features that are significant to navigation. First, the allowable routes for navigation in a mining environment are constantly changing. Equipment is routed into and out of the mining environment along different routes that can change on a daily or even an hourly basis depending on where material is being removed at a particular time. The location of allowable routes, whether the routes are one-way or two-way, the day-to-day existence of ramps to allow passage from one mining level to another, and whether a particular area is open or closed all change rapidly on the basis of mine operations. Adding to the challenge of navigating in the dynamic mining environment is the fact that there may be few physical visual cues that a driver in a mining environment can consistently rely on to determine where the driver can drive. In a conventional city street environment routes are defined by paved roads, curbs, painted lines and traffic signals. In a city street environment, then the user of GPS assisted navigation usually only needs a high level abstract visual representation of the city street environment to be oriented. Routes in a mining environment, on the other hand, may not be obvious as they can be ad hoc, constantly shifting, and are often destroyed in the course of day-to-day material removal operations.
The second feature significant to navigation in a mining environment is the presence of hazards distributed throughout the mine. A partial list of navigation hazards includes mobile heavy equipment such has shovels, bulldozers and material removal trucks, unstable slopes or surfaces, low points where water collects or bogs, high voltage power lines for delivering electricity to mining equipment, and areas where explosives are being used. Hazards, like allowable routes, change on a daily or hour-by-hour basis in a mining environment.
Given the hazardous and dynamic nature of the mine environment, it would be helpful to establish a system for dynamic definition of a road map system, including a spatial definition of the presence of hazards that could be dynamically forwarded to navigation systems embedded in vehicles. Due to the ad hoc nature of routes in a mining environment, it would be useful to present the driver of a vehicle in a mining environment with a visual representation of the dynamically defined road map system including representations of hazards superimposed on a real overhead image of the environment. Such a navigation and hazard avoidance system could incorporate additional useful features such as establishing speed limits across the dynamically defined road map system and alerting drivers when those speed limits are approached or exceeded. Additionally, such a navigation and hazard avoidance system could provide for tracking of vehicles in a mining environment and use such tracking information to improve routing efficiency, detect vehicle misuse, or reconstruct accidents.
Systems and methods of providing navigation data, including map data, and collision and hazard avoidance using GPS are known at various levels in the art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,487,500 B2 to Lemelson et al. describes a system that uses GPS systems on vehicles, augmented by more accurate position sensors, to alert a vehicle operator of hazards in the operator's vicinity, including other vehicles. U.S. Pat. No. 7,047,114 B1 to Rogers et al. describes a hazard warning system for marine vessels. The Rogers system takes GPS position and data information from marine vessels and forwards to those vessels hazard alerts based on the positions of other vessels as well as fixed and semi-fixed hazards derived from nautical charts. U.S. Pat. No. 5,963,130 to Schlager et al. describes a personal alarm system that alerts an individual when the individual nears hazards that are detected by a local device. U.S. Patent Application No. 2004/0145496 describes a network that tracks and provides information regarding the whereabouts of various objects in a street network including vehicles and individuals. UK Patent Application GB 2421828 describes a traffic management hazard management system located on a vehicle that includes map data and location data obtained from a GPS receiver.